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How to Navigate an Adoption Reunion During the Covid-19 Pandemic
It’s later than you think, so open your heart.
On January 15, 2020 the state of New York unsealed its adoption records. Adopted persons and their descendants may now, for a modest administrative fee, request and obtain their original birth certificates. Within 48 hours of the implementation of the new law, more than 3600 adoptees, not including those in New York City, had ordered their pre-adoption birth certificates.
As more and more adoptees learn the names of their birthparents, thousands of reunions might have ensued, but now the Covid-19 pandemic has wormed its way into the intricacies of an adoption reunion. Imagine it. You receive a hand-addressed letter in the mail, a phone call, a private message on Facebook. The son or daughter you relinquished decades ago has surfaced from the deep ocean of secrecy. Now imagine this. That person has been yanked out of reach. Meeting in person, especially with the susceptibility of older people to the virus is, at least for now, ill-advised.
I am a birthmother who relinquished a child in 1970. The state in which he was born still has sealed records, but when he turned 21, I searched for him and found him. My initiative to contact him was steeled by its own crisis. We’ve been happily reunited for three decades.
